In a comparison video, you can see just how much of a difference a form of ray tracing (RT), path tracing, can make in id Software’s evergreen first-person shooter!

In the video embedded below, we take a look at how the original FPS and the modded version look side by side. It’s amazing to see how much lighting technology has improved DOOM II, which looks a little dated in its original form, but that’s understandable considering it’s been out for three decades. And in the eight minutes of footage below, the DOOM II: Ray Traced mod gives you a good sense that you don’t need a new engine, 4K resolution, or spectacular textures to get sufficiently pleasing visuals.

Meanwhile, things are still happening around the franchise, with the recent release of DOOM + DOOM II, which runs on Nightdive’s Kex engine, and we’ve also reported on how easy it is to upload a mod under your own name in the game’s mod browser, even though we had nothing to do with said mod. With this package, at least one of the evergreen titles of the mid-90s and its sequel are now available on all modern platforms.

But even if we don’t mean DOOM + DOOM II, there’s also a new DOOM Eternal installment in the works, DOOM: The Dark Ages, which will be bloody and brutal in the style of the franchise, but this time setting Doom Slayer in a medieval setting. We’ve also reported on the leaked information about the closed-door reveal at QuakeCon, and there will be some changes in the new episode. The Demon Hunt will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC sometime in 2025, so it’s a multiplatform release, so Microsoft didn’t do what they did with Starfield, where there are rumors of a supposed PlayStation 5 version, but we wrote earlier that it was originally in development.

The only question now is where the franchise will go from here…

Source: WCCFTech